Minds out of the gutter, please. I’m referring to Well Hung Meat the organic meat box delivery company, nothing more sinister.

I don’t think I’ve talked much about my ‘food beliefs’ before but I generally try, as in most things in life, to be ethical. When it comes to meat, that means buying good quality cuts from animals that have been looked after; generally free-range and/or organic (although these two are not mutually inclusive). I would rather buy less often and support good farmers than eat meat every day. With that said, pregnancy has given me a huge appetite for meat and so I need to explore my options.

I did a little research and happened upon Meat in a Box, the blog of one Jenny Lau, who is on a mission to cook and eat meat sourced only from UK meat box delivery schemes. She had blogged about an offer on Well Hung Meat and, not one to resist the pull of a freebie, I set about ordering a small selection. See here, a screenshot of my order receipt including reference to the “free roasting joint with first order” promotion:

You can imagine my disappointment, then, when my meat box arrived on Friday last week with no free roasting joint. The “seasonal cuts” (sounded mysterious) was little more than 300g or so of diced pork. Further, I was worried that my inexperience with cooking a good steak would get in the way with the rather expensive (even for organic) rump steaks, so I sought advice from an expert which made absolutely no difference whatsoever; because the steaks were badly cut/uneven they ended up overcooked and chewy on one end and virtually raw on the other.

I contacted Well Hung Meat on Friday about the lack of roasting joint and await their response. In the mean time, I’ll be placing my next meat box order with Riverford who’ve been providing my veg since I signed up in 2008.

Update (29th November, 2011)

I cooked my final steak last night and found the result much better (more tender, more taste). I don’t recall doing anything differently, but the meat itself was cut much more evenly than the first piece so I think I got a more consistent result. Unfortunately, this does little to improve my overall impression of the company having now received a reply regarding the missing roasting joint:

You do need to be set up as a regular customer to have received that promotion. If you would like to do this I will ensure the free joint is included in your next box.

As this was not made clear on either the website or the blog entry pushing the promotion, and indeed the cart accepted my code without problem (as seen in my receipt above) I feel somewhat misled. I am not impressed with my experience of ordering through the website, or indeed the meat I received. I somehow doubt I will be placing a regular order with Well Hung Meat any time soon.

11 comments so far

Should they decide to argue the missing ‘free roasting joint’ feel free to mention that I was there when you opened the box and am more than willing to confirm it’s absence.

I’m sorry your order left you somewhat disappointed Jem. As I said before I have the website of an extremely good local British butcher who also insists that meat be hung before cooking/eating. Their forerib surpasses any beef roasting joint I have ever eaten and that is hung for 3 weeks before sale. If they have none ready (ie: hung for sufficient time) they would rather not sell at all than sell ‘inferior quality’ meats. I’ve used them over the last 20 years and their standards have yet to disappoint me. They also deliver and may well deliver the meat frozen although I have not enquired about this.

Hopefully you will get a fast response as to why your order was of such poor standard.

I’m sorry the food wasn’t what you expected. I hope they do something about it.

Meat makes me uncomfortable, so I just don’t eat it. I also tried to find good, organic free range eggs, but I just ended up with fertilized bloody eggs, so now I don’t really eat eggs. If I weren’t so in to just quitting things , I’d be interested in trying your method of shopping around for ethically produced and tasty foods. Good luck.

I use Abel and Cole, they’ve always been really good and the gammon and steak we’ve ordered has been amazing. They also throw in lots of little freebies too which is nice. I’ve heard good things about Riverford as well though.

I need to find something like that here! Except you know, with better meat :P I hope you plan to contact them back and inform them what their website says and maybe they should fix that since it did let you enter the code. Did they not have a response to the badly cut meats?

Apologies for the experience you had when ordering from us. I am glad that you enjoyed one of the steaks. I’m unsure as to why you had a bad experience with the other I have given you an account credit for the full amount of the steaks. I have checked to see the size of the pork you were sent and it was 405g. If this was not correct please let me know as it would mean an error in our tracability system

We are a tiny company trying hard to get people to eat fantastic meat all the time. We occasionally do offers to attract new customers and I set up this offer with Jenny. I’m sorry that the offer wasn’t clear in future all offers will have clear terms and conditions attached with the offer.

Our website doesn’t have the functionality at present to distinguish when a code is valid. We are working with our IT developers to correct this. We are going to also make it much easier and our clearer on our website about offers that are only valid when placing a repeat order.

We are trying to grow our business and want to become peoples regular supply of meat in much the same way that veg box schemes work. Even when people set up a regular order there is never any contract or minimum commitment. We also give anyone placing a regular order 10% toward their next order as well as including recipe cards, newsletters and occasional free gifts, samples and event invites.

I have credited your account with points equivalent to £16 so if you wish you can have a roasting joint of your choice. I have credited an extra £12 for the steak that you were not happy with.

Apologies again for not being clear, we will endeavour to be more clear in all our offers and communication future.

As I said in the post, my assumption with the steak ‘issue’ was the uneven cut, but am far from an expert on these things so definitely appreciate the opportunity to taste some (hopefully!) truly great steaks.

The bigger concern was most definitely the fact that the cart accepted the promo code even though I’d not fulfilled a certain term. Further to that, in my communications with one of your customer services people about my order in the run up to the delivery, at no point did she raise the fact that I’d used this code “improperly”.

I’ve not placed an order with Riverford yet, so am still looking around for a meat supplier. I passed my driving test yesterday thus am in a good mood :) so will use your gesture of goodwill to set up my first regular order and will see how we get on.

I really value any feedback on our products and services whether it is good or bad.

I fully take on board your comments about it not being good enough that the promotion code being accepted when terms aren’t met. This is in our to do list and I hope to have it functioning correctly in the coming months.

I will also pass on your comments to all our team here to ensure we are more clear in our communications with customers about the use of promotion codes.

Congratulations on passing your driving test and if you have any issues with the box please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

I’m sorry about your initial poor experience, Jem. It really makes me smile to see your recent correspondence with Adam on your blog here, though. It’s really nice to see that there are still small businesses out there that genuinely seem to care about their customer base. I hope you continue to have good experiences with them in the future. :)

Hopefully your next experience of them will be a better one, but just a sidenote, we’ve used Riverford for meat and were quite happy with it. Not looked at the Well Hung Meat Co. site so will take a look at that if your second experience is better :)